When writers hit a block, they read. When musicians get stuck, they seek stimulation by listening to music. It’s the same with any craft. The more you surround yourself with the work of others in your field, the more opportunities you have to learn, be inspired, and channel those influences back into your own work.

For data visualization practitioners, that means looking at inspiring graphics and reading about the creative processes behind them. In other words—spending a lot of time on Twitter and data viz blogs.

Here’s a list of data visualization leaders who contribute to the community on a daily basis.

Alberto Cairo is the Knight Chair in Visual Journalism at the University of Miami’s School of Communication and has written two books on data visualization: The Functional Art and The Truthful Art. He shares his favorite books, articles, and own thoughts regularly on his blog. It’s a must-subscribe for anyone looking to surround themselves with data viz thought leadership.

He strives for the articles on his site “to be of value over a longer time period”—and, indeed, they are. The vast majority of his posts are as relevant today as the day they were published. For instance, if you feel strongly about pie charts, Kosara has a trove of articles on the subject:

Kosara has also written several research papers as a Senior Research Scientist at Tableau and a former associate professor. For those who want the TL;DR version, he usually summarizes his findings in an accessible, easy-to-read post.

For those who reach for their pencil instead of their keyboard when they encounter a new dataset, Giorgia Lupi is your new hero. She’s written and presented extensively on how sketching can define the structure and aesthetic of visualizations. Here are a couple of her projects and presentations that delve into drawing data:

Data journalist and information designer David McCandless’s Twitter is a steady stream of graphics from around the web. His site, which boasts tons of interactive charts, and his books are worth checking out as well.

Cole Nussbaumer is the author of Storytelling with Data, a book about turning data into high-impact visual stories. She has a clean, simple style and excels at including helpful annotations without overburdening the graphic. She developed and taught a data visualization class at Google and now offers workshops for companies and the public. Her Twitter feed is full of thoughtful commentary on real-life data visualizations.

Randy Olson has done extensive work in data visualization and machine learning using Python. He comes out with an original chart on his blog a couple of times a month. And since he’s the community leader of the subreddit Data is Beautiful, it shouldn’t be surprising that he tweets fascinating visualizations multiple times a day.

Like Andy Kirk, Jon Schwabish maintains an excellent site of resources for newbies and professionals alike. One section of note is Remakes, where Schwabish takes an existing chart and offers critique by making a new version. But Schwabish might be known best for The PolicyViz Podcast, a series of interviews with practitioners in the field.